


What Lies Below

by yellowyCell



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Ancestors, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:43:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowyCell/pseuds/yellowyCell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a young marquise meets an empress and her pet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Lies Below

**Author's Note:**

> I am simply sick of toying and fiddling with this for so long. I made a rule a while ago that when someone is disgusted with what they have made, but cannot find a way to improve it, then it is done. And, holy shit, I am so past done with this.

Two full moons and fifteen sunrises after a boat was hijacked by a young marquise and quickly reclaimed, a letter for a release and pardon found its way inside the warden’s mailbox. The jailed marquise was to be bound, blindfolded and transported to such and such a location on such and such date, and for something . The marquise never had a chance to read the letter herself, she only heard secondhand accounts of what it held. Whatever she heard was vague and heavily censored, but that was because the message itself was vague and censored.  
  
It was an odd request. There was no denying that it was intended for that penitentiary in particular, because it addressed the marquise by her name, Spinneret Mindfang. As well as recognizing her name, it likewise recognized her crimes — and asked for any and all documentation about it to be turned into different hands. Or else this or that might happen; again, she never heard exactly what the consequence was for not following through.  
  
The letter was said to unsigned, no one would say who the seal was from, and it bore no trace of bribery. Regardless, the message was still faithfully followed through without a single detail being overlooked, and without a single unnecessary word ever spoken about it. While the warden swore that it was irrelevant to mention any details of the cease and desist to anyone except Mindfang and her escorts, rumors floated around that it was the location, not the paperwork, that lead to such a speedy and mysterious release. Who knows , whispered one escort to another, maybe there is a bit of blackmail involved.  
  
Mindfang’s joy was undeniable, and her quips were so persistent and common that they were annoying. At first they beat her, but when it was time to leave, they masked her. Before they pulled her out of her cell to transport her away, they wrangled a heavy metal mask onto her head. They lead her outside and into the protected vehicle in a newfound silence.  
  
The mask held her jaw shut, blocked her vision, and pumped oxygen that was laced with minute amounts of morphine directly into her airways — not enough morphine to nullify pain, but enough to make her movements sluggish and her mind unfocused. Every twenty seconds, a burst of white noise flooded her ears, in order to keep her focus (and thus her psychics) scattered and under control.  
  
Around ninety blasts of static later, she was forced into a standing position, pushed until she reluctantly started walking out of the armored vehicle, across some level surface that Mindfang could not distinguish through her thin-soled shoes. She nervously allowed herself to be blindly directed, unable to see, smell, feel, or hear anything about her drop-off point. Ten more bursts of static later, two prongs dug into her neck and delivered a shock that knocked her out.  
  
What surprised her most when she woke up was not that she was left alone, nor that her mask was removed, nor that she was enclosed in some brightly colored granite room: what did surprise her was how strongly the smell of the ocean plugged her nose and how the taste of sea salt invaded her tongue. She was not in bondage at all, she likely was not even at a prison.  
  
She sat up, rubbed her aching head and enjoyed the silence that was not broken up by white noise. With the exception of her orange fatigues, every trace of her imprisonment — from the plastic shackles on her wrists to the metal helmet — had been removed from her character. She certainly was not in any prison she had heard of.  
  
She observed a folded pile of clothing at her feet. When she lifted it up, she saw it was a full body suit made of black fabric that stretched when it was pulled. Quick to leave behind her orange jumpsuit, Mindfang slid into the tight fabric. It was stiff, it was sleek, it was warm, and it made annoying crackling sounds whenever she moved her limbs. It covered every inch of her body, with the exception of her neck and head, in a firm grip. Mindfang could tell, by the way how the fabric trapped heat and molded to her body, that it was meant for water. It was too restrictive for swimming, along with being too flimsy to be used as protection or a diving suit. How strange.  
  
It was mysterious, made little sense, and caused her to feel paranoid. She was alone, unarmed, unaided, and still woozy from her impromptu sleep — she declared that she was allowed to be as cautious and paranoid as she wanted. Was this the uniform of a galley slave? Perhaps, but the suit felt too expensive to be wasted a slave.  
  
Tucked in the neck of her new clothing was a folded leaf of paper. Mindfang slipped the sheet out and read the message.  
  
 _‘Forward.’_  
  
That was it. One word, seven characters, one period. Forward.  
  
She flipped her middle finger to the way forward, poked out her tongue, and turned on her heel. With an unamused face, she stared at the locked door that lay before her, a spindly crank resiliently erected in the center. Testing the crank proved that the door would not budge from her position.  
  
She muttered to herself that she had nothing else to lose and walked the other way, down the corridor that emanated sea salt and dripped condensed water. Forward.  
  
The pinkish granite under her toes was smoother than ice and colder than a winter breeze. Warm clothing or not, it deadened her feet and sent a chill through her body as more questions came to her mind. Why was the floor so cold, when the sun was still out? Mindfang swore that she was never a person to complain of the cold, but something about this mysterious release from her prison froze her in ways she did not want to admit.  
  
Mindfang realized, with delayed surprise, that she was somewhere regal and expensive. Those self-entitled trolls, the ones with pride in their looks but little value to their name, dwell in places such as this: close to the cold ocean, with more money invested in their homes than they cared to admit they actually owned. Those short-fused elitists, telling their so-called friends of how they owned a team of customs runners, fast to avoid the watch of the legal officers, but slow to react when they found a soon-to-be marquise in the captain’s quarters, sipping rum while singing about how she singlehandedly won her wager by bringing down the very boat they were standing on, a wager set by a purple-blood, their ‘ _leader of nobody, nobody being money-grabbing welches like you_ ’...  
  
(It was wager that cost the newly titled marquise a rifle butt to the cheek and some time in prison, along with a bounty across the coast. But with the bounty came fame, and everyone soon knew of her as a aristocrat who sides with the low classes. Well worth it , Mindfang had often snorted to other inmates.)  
  
At the end of the granite hall, a hole with an open latch was waiting. Inside, Mindfang could see little beside blackness, smell nothing but pungent salt and caked slime, hear nothing but gently lapping water. A note was left next to the top rung of the steel ladder.  
  
 _‘Descend.’  
_  
Mindfang flipped the leaf of paper over, looking for any more words. Finding it blank, she discarded it and slid down the ladder. Again, she made the argument of having nowhere else to go, and having nothing to lose.  
  
The granite tube she climbed down grew darker and wetter, the air becoming more difficult to breathe as she went. At the very bottom, she could see nothing but black and feel little besides the mounting pressure in her ears and the wetness that dripped down her jet-black hair. The floor she sat on was grated and dug uncomfortably into her flesh.  
  
Another note, written on soggy paper, was tacked to the last rung. It was similar to the others, offering vague instructions in very neat, very thin letters.  
  
 _‘Wait.’  
_  
Mindfang rolled the wet paper into a tube and jammed it down a hole in the grate. After shouting that she would never be able to sleep in such a damp and inhospitable space to no one in particular, she climbed up the ladder until she returned to the top.  
  
The top was sealed off.  
  
“Well shit,” groaned Mindfang.  
  
It was the lasting effects of morphine, or the air, or the position the ladder that forced her into, or her wet fingers, or the tight wetsuit that made Mindfang unable to open the seal, not her amazement that she was trapped. It was definitely not because of her curiosity that she gave up so easily and went back down, it must have been her fear of heights. She fell asleep at the bottom not to submit to the will of her anonymous tormentor and see what would happen next, it was only because she was tired.  
  
When she awoke, a finger was on her neck. Mindfang knew where to place a finger to pass a sign, to block airflow, to induce all sorts of automatic reflexes, and to simply inflict pain. This long-nailed finger that certainly was not hers was in a position to do none of these things. Instead, it caressed the bottom of her jaw and tilted her head up.  
  
Mindfang opened her left eye. The seven irises clumsily plowed through the inky blackness and traced the shape of someone , crouching in front of Mindfang, one hand resting on the ground and the other rubbing her chin.  
  
A single command passed through the stranger’s lips. “Wake up.”  
  
The feminine voice, the way how it curtly gave its command — Mindfang knew this female troll to be the one who passed all the notes to her. She probably was the person behind the letter as well.  
  
Mindfang opened her eyes before she could control herself. The authority behind the voice was magnificent. Even Mindfang’s most potent and concentrated psychics lacked the efficiency and power of the stranger’s voice. Mindfang was impressed, attentive, and possibly jealous.  
  
The hand on her neck cupped the point of her chin. “Open,” said the magnificent voice.  
  
Mindfang’s opposition to open her mouth did not last even a second.  
  
“Breathe,” commanded the silhouette.  
  
Mindfang lifted an eyebrow, mouth still agape. She was about to speak (more to show that she opened her mouth by her own choice rather than the command of someone else) when the figure lifted their other arm and jabbed the palm of their hand to Mindfang’s mouth.  
  
Mindfang gagged and spat as an ungodly _something_ sealed her mouth shut, pulsing and wiggling and _oh merciful shit_ , _breathing_ as it noisily positioned itself over her mouth. Cool wet leather latched to her cheeks, her chin, and her mouth. Long tendrils, thin as strands of string, forced themselves into her mouth, down her throat, and lined her windpipe. As the strands plastered themselves against the inside of her mouth, they activated a whole range of gag reflexes, but they stubbornly refused to be displaced by the acidic bile that swished over them. Hooks, probably thinner than strands of hair, shot out of the tendrils and embedded themselves inside her body, with pain similar to feeling hundreds of minute pinpricks.  
  
When she attempted to breathe out of her nose, she found her convulsions were too strong to let any air pass by. When she tried to stand or fight back, she could not keep her control focused on her stiff legs; instead every bit of consciousness was spent on the dangers of suffocation. Only by the authority of the troll’s voice did she lean against the wall, relax her neck and let the thick air pass through her nose. She massaged what little of her throat was uncovered and swallowed the sick that was trapped in her mouth (which surprisingly had not leaked out of her lips). The unpleasant sucking sensation that the leather _thing_ made immediately after swallowing nearly made her vomit again.  
  
“Stand up,” commanded the figure.  
  
Mindfang stood, breathing uneasily through her nose as she rose. An oily taste filled her mouth as her convulsions stopped. Loose segments of the leather mass on her mouth flapped in the air as she stood, moving on their own accord, feeling the air with movements so delicate it was hard to think of it as a machine. When Mindfang ran a gloved finger across the pulsating being, she felt that the skin was deeply wrinkled and continuously pulling air into its body. It was alive .  
  
“Follow me,” said the troll.  
  
The troll leaned on the grate and laced her fingers through the square holes. She lifted a jagged section out, pushed it to the side, and dropped inside. A second later, a loud splash clapped below, spraying Mindfang’s bottom with miniscule drops of water. Mindfang, figuring she had nowhere else to go, did as she was told.  
  
The suit kept most of the stinging cold out, but her face was overcome by the frigid temperature, and her eyes stung from the initial shock of salt. Mindfang kicked to the surface of the black water, wiping her hair out of her vision and cursing the abomination on her mouth for making speech impossible. Surprisingly, the living thing on her mouth was unmoving, the tendrils lining her mouth were much less noticeable, and the being continuously puffed cool oxygen into her mouth. When Mindfang grabbed the wet beast and tried to pull it off, she found the starfish-like being’s tendrils, whose muscular roots forced her mouth open, kept the creature firmly planted from the inside. Amazing, and absolutely unnatural in too many ways.  
  
She had heard rumors of laboratory creatures, hybrids of plants and animals, with no purpose to their existence but to help trolls where machines would fail. This mutated starfish, the one that latched onto her neck and invaded her mouth, was not natural. And despite Mindfang’s frantic pulling, it would not let go of her.  
  
She treaded water in the granite tube, breathing air through her nose and looking out for the other troll. The troll’s spindly horns ascended out of the cold water, followed by a mess of black hair and a face that Mindfang could not distinguish.  
  
Before she could react, the troll brought both her hands up in the air, and forced a hollow contraption on Mindfang’s head. The force and speed drove the surprised marquise underwater, where she flailed and shoved and reached for the air above, only be pushed back down. A pair of dexterous hands tied her hair into a long strand and forced it inside the contraption.  
  
The nameless troll pushed and twisted the machine onto Mindfang’s head, until the padded inside collided with the top of her head. A soft foam material molded comfortably around her horns. A glass screen appeared over her vision, but it lacked any protection for her nose, and allowed a torrent of water to flood into her nostrils.  
  
It was a sort of helmet that protected her temple, her eyes, and the back of her head.  
  
She had to rely on the recycled air from the creature on her mouth as she snorted water out of her nose and coughed liquid that remained trapped in her throat. The air somehow felt colder and just as wet. While it kept her alive and breathing, it certainly did not make her feel comfortable.  
  
When the helmet was secured and snug, the troll pinned Mindfang’s arms to her sides from behind. After Mindfang finished her futile attempts of panicking and kicking away, the troll loosened her grip. Not enough to allow her to break free, but enough to show a shred of sincerity.  
  
“Be calm,” commanded the troll. Both of them were bouncing on the surface of the water, their shoulders still submerged in the icy water. It was far too dark and Mindfang’s eyes were burning far too much from salt for any details to be picked up.  
  
Mindfang wanted to say that she was calm, that the troll had better explain herself, and that there had to be some way to get this freak of nature off of her mouth.  
  
The troll’s strong voice echoed and twined with the slapping water as she continued to speak. “The Rebreather will temporarily mend itself into your airways,” said she. “Breathe through your mouth while it finishes bonding.”  
  
Mindfang was about to fight back and drag a large breath of air through her nose, because she was not going to breathe when her mouth was invaded by tentacles, but her rebellious act was interrupted by the troll folding a loose flap of the Rebreather’s body over Mindfang’s nose. More loud slapping sounds, more strands of string-like tentacles forcing themselves into her body, more thin hooks cutting her insides, more ungodly breathing and movement from the organism on her lower face.  
  
“The Rebreather needs a moment to bond with the diving headgear,” muttered the stranger. Indeed, the Rebreather stretched itself to envelope the edges of the glass with its prickly body.  “Soon you will be completely wrapped in a cocoon of water-resistant material,” continued the stranger. She pulled on the neck of Mindfang’s wetsuit, stretching the black material up to Mindfang’s jawline. The Rebreather grabbed the taut fabric and plastered it to her neck. “Synthetics and natural materials, the living and the dead, the genetically altered and the genetically unchanged, all working together to secure you in a waterproof suit. The synergy is beautiful, and it works better than any machine that a mechanic could dream up.”  
  
The Rebreather noisily molded with the hard metal running down the sides of Mindfang’s face. She sucked greedily on the puffs of air that blew into her mouth. It was all so horribly unnatural, yet the air was much more pleasant and filling than the air she was breathing before, regardless of how cold it was.  
  
“It creates a wholesome and completely natural seal with the host it latches onto,” said the troll. “As a reward for carrying it, protecting it, and giving it heat, the Rebreather gifts its host with the byproducts of its respiration — nitrogen-laced oxygen from both the air, and more importantly, the water. A symbiotic bond that the Rebreather was created for, to allow those of lower blood castes to see the depths without aid of an oxygen tank.”  
  
The seal was complete when Mindfang felt a pressure start to build in her ears. The babbling troll’s strong voice, along with the slapping of water against stone, sounded smaller and further away. She held back on swallowing and relieving the pressure, and she much rather preferred being unable to hear.  
  
“The Rebreather is your lifeline, young marquise; it will supply you with oxygen when you need it, it will keep the water out, and it will suck up any water that gets inside. How could you not want to defend its life for helping yours? It does so much to help you, and you only need to a few small tasks for the good of both of you.”  
  
But she was still audible, and this annoyed Mindfang. She was _preaching_ , this crazy troll was _preaching_. Why tell a convicted (and guilty, Mindfang reluctantly had to admit) hijacker about the functions of pointless creatures? In fact, why would the troll give her one of the Rebreathers? Or why would the troll (whoever she was) want her, of all people? So many questions, and the only knowledgeable answers were still ludicrous.  
  
She _had_ to be dreaming. Maybe she got a good hit to the head, and she was still sitting in that penitentiary, the one that she had more or less corrupted from the inside out.  
  
“Soon enough, you will know why this is happening to you,” said the troll, almost as if she were reading Mindfang’s thoughts. “This has little to do with your crimes. Rather, this has everything to do with you. You have connections, connections with the land and its people; you have connections with friends, and enemies. I want you to dive down with me, and see the sight down in the ocean, so you may spread what you see.”  
  
 _Sweet mother grub_ , Mindfang thought to herself, _shut up_.  
  
This meant two things: they were diving, and that it was not a dream. It was too ridiculous for any dream she would imagine — but it was ridiculous enough for her reality. And the certainty for a dive came when she realized that she was waterproof, she had a breathing apparatus, and that she was already sunken in the water.  
  
The silhouette of the troll vanished below the surface of the water. She came back up with two straps in her hands. “Take these,” said she.  
  
Mindfang hesitantly grabbed the straps, and immediately she slipped below the surface. Water slapped against the glass screen, pounded the back of her metallic helmet and knocked against the edge of her neck. Not a single drop slipped in. The Rebreather started breathing its puffs of air faster, pushing the oxygen into her mouth and pulling the wasted air out of her nose. Miniature bubbles popped out of the altered starfish’s skin, clouding her visions with white spheres and silent black.  
  
When the troll said they were diving, she meant that they were diving, _now_.  
  
The straps pulled her down, yanked her arms below her and streamed her legs up. Tied on the end of the leather straps were several wrapped chunks of heavy unseeable rocks, probably lead. Mindfang narrowed her eyes, released the straps, and floated back up.  
  
A black streak flashed by Mindfang, gathered the straps, and swam back up with amazing dexterity and strength. The troll grabbed Mindfang’s foot and pulled her back down, sliding the lead weight on Mindfang’s shoulders. Mindfang clawed for the space of air above as she fell down further the dark granite tube, all the while the troll tightened the straps onto her back and around her waist.  
  
Mindfang’s descent was broken up by another grate in the tube. Her body was stuck in a comical position of falling — hands and feet in the air, back on the ground, head tilted forward into her chest. She was angry, uncomfortable, but mostly confused with what the hell was going on.  
  
The troll lifted a section of the grate and pushed it to the side. The troll pulled Mindfang down the hole, lead weight and all, and followed, both of them streaming bubbles as they fell.  
  
Oh, this troll was a seadweller, no doubt. She was sucking in water and breathing out bubbles with no aid of a breathing apparatus, while navigating through the water with grace and speed. Beneath that mess of black hair and two long horns, Mindfang was certain she would find fins and a pair of purple irises.  
  
The glass screen flickered to life, casting the space above in a sickly red light. Two words flashed across the screen.  
  
 _‘Look up. ’_  
  
Mindfang’s position made it so that she could do nothing but look up in amazement.  
  
The tube ended in an upside-down funnel, dropping the young marquise and the unnamed seadweller into what must be the open sea. Quivering arrows of light flickered across the surface of the water above, casting needles of waving lights under the vast expanse of water, churning and twisting like an aquamarine blanket. Floating in the water, like a metal glacier, was some enormous structure, completely indistinguishable from the bottom.  
  
Only seadwellers could live inside a floating structure of that scale. And the nameless seadweller next to her, hidden behind the veil of darkness, was undoubtedly one of its residents. Mindfang wondered how she was escorted onto the floating building in the first place before she wondered why .  
  
 _‘Here is where they tell me wait. Down there is where I bide my time. If you are a troll of prowess with the water, you shall see why, and live to tell the tale.’  
_  
 _Prowess_ , thought Mindfang, imagining her voice to spit out the word. _I would be nothing if I was not levelheaded! It takes prowess, Lady, to sneak on a ship, alone, with nothing but a fancy knife and your own wits to bring a group of customs runners to their knees — literally to their knees — then to gleefully crash the boat into a customs patrol, with no purpose but a bet and a title. I earned my title, they say, by putting the ‘pro’ in prowess ..._  
  
Of course, she could say nothing.  
  
 _‘I will explain when we reach the bottom.’  
_  
The screen blanked out entirely, save for the pitiful light it emanated.  
  
The troll swam next to her, easily keeping pace with powerful kicks. Her forest of black hair streamed behind her, clamped in a thick braid by small ties. The bubbles that leaked out of the troll’s face mingled in her hair, collided with her colossal horns and floated to the surface.  
  
Too soon, the sunlight from above dimmed away. Everything she saw was limited to the small cone of light casted by her diving helmet. Besides the constantly churning bubbles and the seadweller’s strong legs, there was nothing in sight that moved. No eels, no sharks, no jellyfish, none of those damned cuttlefish that polluted the water every time she went on planned dives.  
  
Mindfang felt incredibly uncomfortable. Her head hurt from the mounting pressure, her ears filled with the rushing and pounding of water, her eyes felt like they would pop out, and the air the Rebreather puffed through was hard to breathe from her awkward position. The mask’s edge pressed harder and harder into the bridge of her nose and dug itself deeper and deeper into both her and the Rebreather’s skin. Every once in a while, the Rebreather released a hiss of air that relieved the pressure in her head and eyes. _Resourceful little freak of nature..._  
  
The water, never having been touched by the cruel Alternian sunlight, felt like ice to Mindfang. Cold crawled through her diving suit and chilled her bones. She was unable to move her frozen fingers, curl her icy toes, or bend her stiff ankles. The lead pack on her shoulders burned her arms and her back as it painfully arched her spine. The air was harder to breath and less satisfying than before, the frigid temperature starting to cut her teeth with sharp coldness.  
  
 _What does this crazy seadweller want?_  thought Mindfang.  
  
But despite everything — the air, the cold, the lead on her bent back, the mounting pressure that was building on her chest, and the whole damned charade — Mindfang was still in shocked wonder. The suit she wore was not as unwieldy as the diving harness she wore the few times she went underwater. This one, in fact, was slightly comfortable. The visored helmet, while already it was getting itchy and beginning to press on her horns too heavily, was soft and lightweight, completely unlike the metal cages that bore too heavily into her shoulders.  
  
They fell deeper into the water for a long time. Around two minutes before she declared she would rip off the Rebreather and let the water prematurely end her everlasting fall, the seadweller gave a few mighty tugs. Rather than earlier tugs, to control the descent or to keep the lead pack secured, these were fierce. The troll worked at the straps and buckles of the soaked leather-like material. Mindfang, understanding the hint, twisted and shrugged off the heavy pack. The seadweller grabbed her leg before the weight was released. Dropping the pack jerked Mindfang’s body upward, like a cork out of water. If the seadweller let her rise to the surface that fast, the change in pressure would kill Mindfang outright.  
  
One arm firmly wrapped around Mindfang’s leg, making her look like some odd extension from the long haired troll. Mindfang’s limbs refused to move of their own accord; instead they reached above with a force that felt like a giant was trying to rip them out of their sockets. Below her, the seadweller busily messed the weights in her hands.  
  
They had stopped falling.  
  
The seadweller pulled Mindfang down. The lead weights were once again tightened to her body, this time around her navel instead of her back.The seadweller squeezed the straps until it forced the air out of Mindfang’s lungs, adjusted the suspenders to pull her shoulders forward and down, and let go. Mindfang floated neither up nor down for a moment, like gravity was making up its mind, before it decided to pull her down. She fell gracelessly into frozen black muck, her knees sticking out in outrageous angles and her rear colliding with the hard ground. The lead settled her body in a sitting position before starting to drop her onto her back.  
  
 _What would happen if the Rebreather were to get clogged by the mud...?_  
  
The seadweller caught Mindfang. She was dragged against a rock-like finger and leaned against it into a more stable sitting position. At the edge of her cone of light, the seadweller faced Mindfang, arms crossed, legs centered in a prominent pose. Like a warlord, clad in black.  
  
The screen flashed to life again.  
  
 _‘You will be unable to move, unable to act freely. The weight of the sea is doing horrors to your body this far down, but it is necessary that you came. The clothing you wear will protect your body from a majority of the ill effects caused by the pressure and cold, but I am afraid there is no way to make your body any more comfortable at this point.’  
_  
 _If this is some elaborate way to humiliate me..._ thought Mindfang. _Oh hell, she is probably a friend of the ‘owner’ of those custom runners, and she knew the right way how to pull me out of jail, just to murder me under the sea. It would be like that coward to pull one of his friends out instead of facing me.  
_  
But it did not add up, and she knew this. Why go through the trouble of giving her the diving equipment, or the smoke and mirrors messages?  
  
A sentence popped up on the screen.  
  
 _‘Look into my eyes.’  
_  
The seadweller walked forward, kicking up clouds of opaque muck where she walked. She knelt down in front of Mindfang, looked into her eyes, and waited. The light from the helmet was adequate enough to see the seadweller’s features.  
  
The seadweller also wore a tight wetsuit, but this one offered no protection for the troll’s arms, feet, or shoulders. Starting at her shoulders and ending at her ankles, two parallel lines ran down the length of the suit. At her ample breasts, Mindfang spied the lines crossing. Her long-nailed fingers, her wrists, her neck, her ankles, and her long stream of hair all were decorated in all sorts of expensive rings, braces, necklaces and brightly colored jewelry. Lead spheres hung from cradles of cords around her waist like sheathed bolas, pulling the seadweller firmly down on the seafloor. Her thin mouth was contorted into a pursed line of black lips. Where her ears should be, there indeed were massive fins that gently wafted water that disrupted the steady discharge of bubbles. Her eyes were outlined by ornate magenta goggles that dug into the hollow of her eyes and clashed with skin right below her thin eyebrows. At her brow was a thin crown, dotted with a large gem.  
  
Mindfang’s eyesight always was terribly lopsided, but she would be damned if she was not able to see anything at that short a distance. Between the beats of passing foam, Mindfang peered closer at the troll’s goggled eyes. She could hardly contain her shock. The color of her eyes, even in the meager light, was undeniable.  
  
The seadweller lifted her hand, revealed a small remote, and pressed a button.  
  
 _‘Now that you know who I am, _ _ you hopefully will take me more seriously. Will you, young marquise?’_

  
Every message was prerecorded, stored in the thick diving helmet, and only needed a simple signal to play. So very typical of _her_ , so desperate to make herself sound so dignified and intelligent, that _she_ needed to think everything out. Pepper Mindfang with _her_ rabbles of thought-provoking and educated language, to make herself seem smarter than whom _she_  had made herself out to be.  
  
It still did not make sense to Mindfang why she was the only audience, and underwater no less, to Her Imperial Condescension, the scourge and unopposed empress of the entire race of the trolls.  
  
Mindfang remembered to nod in mute shock at the message that was still plastered across her screen.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension pressed the button on the remote.  
  
 _‘Bear with me for a few moments longer. Let me show you what those above land have scarcely seen.’  
_  
Mindfang nodded, even though Her Imperious Condescension demanded no answer.  
  
Another remote press.  
  
 _‘_ _Wait.’  
_  
Her Imperious Condescension kicked off, swimming away with a few mighty kicks.  
  
Mindfang considered banging her head against the rock, crack the glass or kill the Rebreather, and end this insane dream. When her neck would do nothing but loll to the side, Mindfang rid her mind of the urge.  
  
Mindfang went over everything she had done the day before. When she could not recall taking any strong hallucinogen or receiving any head trauma in a fair amount of time, she searched her mind for other fruitless explanations. Then she stopped thinking entirely. A dream where she met the Her Imperious Condescension was not far fetched; a dream where she was trapped under the frozen water, listening to the tyrannical empress, sitting in the briny muck and feeling every single bit of it sounded too absurd for a dream, but just absurd enough for her life. What a change, and she thought her brand luck was easy to predict.  
  
A light grew in the distance where Her Imperious Condescension swam off.  
  
When Mindfang spat _‘fantastic’_ in her mind, she was not sure if she was being sarcastic or not. S he was not interested in whatever Her Imperious Condescension had to show.

  
The light grew larger in its size until it dwarfed Her Imperious Condescension’s height. A deep vibration shook the ground like an earthquake, clouding the air in thick muck.  
  
Her heart pounded in her chest. The air became scarcer and less filling, either from her quickened breath or the Rebreather struggling to breathe through the mud. She felt so trapped all of the sudden, unable to move even though she was not restricted by any bonds. Well, any bonds she was used to.  
  
A deep moan, one that would put a whale to shame, shook the water. It was lower in pitch and higher in volume than the growls of any demon she could imagine.  
  
 _Oh shit._  
  
The light grew ever closer. The Rebreather shuddered in mouth, the glass screen vibrated in its place, Mindfang’s ears and head pounded harder, but not from the pressure. With each beat of her heart, she felt her forehead and her unresponsive limbs pulse in time with her quickened heart. Her breath grew scarce, her throat tightened, she became so horribly aware of the Rebreather’s presence on her face. If she did not gain control of her worries soon, she feared that she would vomit.  
  
 _Ohhhhhhhh shit.  
_  
The light, at least three times taller than Her Imperious Condescension when she was standing, stopped advancing. Caught between the mysterious wall of light and Mindfang’s pitiful cone of helmet glow stood the silhouette of Her Imperious Condescension.  
  
 _Ohhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhit.  
_  
The Rebreather passed out a few quick hisses of air to relieve the tension that grew on her face. A new message.  
  
 _‘You know her by many names. The Ultimate Judge, the Ageless Seer, the Empress’s Right Hand, the Terror of the Seas, The Rift’s Carbuncle, the Emissary to the Horrorterrors, the Speaker of the Vast Glub. These are all more or less true._ This is Gl’bgolyb, she is my lusus.’  
  
 _Ohhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhiiiiiiiit.  
_  
The thick mass, along with Her Imperious Condescension, moved closer. It was a glowing tube of wrinkled skin and leather, thicker at one end and thinner at the other — a tentacle. A single tentacle, almost as large as a boat, and the behemoth was said to be made of thousands of them.  
  
 _‘Rid your mind of all the fallacies you have heard of her, for she is no monster. She is kind, she is rational, and she is capable of vast intelligence that even I am unable to grasp. Young marquise, she is not a terror, nor a ravenous beast. She is just... big.’  
_  
Mindfang did not need to be reminded of the horror’s size.  
  
 _‘For now, she is well fed and contently silent. Any sounds you hear her make are mostly harmless, and will not cause you any negative effects.’  
_  
The leviathan still threw Mindfang into a terrified state of mind. The creature was said to break the minds and bodies of everyone but its current keeper if it grew too upset; that it loved Her Imperious Condescension with unending loyalty and so abhorred others that it broke apart their bodies when they grew close; that its ravenous hunger required the death of thousands of lusii to keep it full; that staring into its eyes caused your mind to shatter as though it was made of glass; that, at one famous moment, Her Imperious Condescension ordered it to destroy the fleet of a rebellion, a fleet with enough power laden in the ships to take over the entire planet, and the beast squashed it with little difficulty.  
  
If there was a hell on Alternia, everyone agreed it was the home of this beast. And she was staring right. At. It.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension turned to the mass of heavy leather. She ran her hand over the white skin, patted it, scratched it, and generally treated it as if it were a helpless wiggler. While she caressed and rubbed the tentacle, more words appeared across the glass.  
  
 _‘Do you think she is beautiful? You may say she is not, but I disagree. Look closer at her, do you see why she glows?’  
_  
Barnacles. Dotting the tentacle, pouring out low amounts of light, and feeling the water for food with their thread-like strands, were bioluminescent barnacles. They were all over the scarred skin of the tentacle.  
  
 _‘_ That _is why she is beautiful. She may look like a nightmare to you, she may strike you with endless fear, she may have done so many regrettable actions in her life, but she is also the source of life. An entire ecosystem is built around her, one that cleans her body, brightens her path, heals her injuries and eases her pain. And she loves it, being the source of life and the structure of existence for so many hundreds of small organisms, organisms that treat her not as a prophet of the horrorterrors, but as a mother.’  
_  
‘Mother’ was an alien term to trolls, but Mindfang thought it was associated with a female figurehead who was known as a beacon of comfort and compassion. She found it impossible to call _it_ a ‘mother’. Did it even have feelings, like other lusii?  
  
 _‘But.’  
_  
There’s always an exception, Empress...  
  
 _‘Not everyone else sees her as who she is. She is unfortunate to be touched by the influence of the horrorterrors. She is intelligent, more intelligent than anyone could be prepared to imagine. She is very old, and she has seen and understands everything about trolls. She speaks to me all the time, telling me about what she thinks, about how to raise an interstellar empire, based on the fallen empires she has seen, and the fallen ideas they tried to force. What she tells me to do... We are not proud, but everything she says are effective. She is not a dumb brute, she is a seer that has seen it all, and knows even more.’  
_  
The source of intelligence for a crazed tyrant was a spawn of hell that could speak. Mindfang realized that yes, she was awake, because her mind could not think of such far-fetched ideas. Everyone always said their Empress was crazy, but this was something different.  
  
 _‘She wants to die, but she knows she is not allowed by the gods she speaks for. She wants to be left alone, away from everyone, everyone but me and her ‘children’, so they may not hear the lethal sounds that come from her maw. Potent sounds, she claims, that are stubborn echoes of the horrorterrors’ true voice.’  
_  
Mindfang started to feel woozy and light headed. She had been under the water too long, she still had too much morphine in her blood, she had not gotten a full breath of air in so very long, and she needed to get the hell away from the insane monarch and her hellspawn custodian.  
  
 _‘Let me show you what I mean.’  
_  
Her Imperious Condescension left the tentacle and swam off. Mindfang began to panic.  
  
The tentacle pulled back, too fiercely and too quickly for something that big. Mindfang barely stopped herself from being shot off from the surging water. If it were not for the lead weights, she would have tumbled in the sea like crumpled paper in a gust of air.  
  
 _‘If the signal can reach you this far, let me warn you: you sit at the edge of a ravine, the ravine where she rests. She will rise up if I ask her.’  
_  
 _Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit_ shit _._  
  
‘Her face may fill you with much terror. Persevere, young marquise.’  
  
 _Not the_ fucking _face_ , Mindfang wanted to cry, _not the_ fucking _face that was said to kill you if you looked too_ fucking _closely._  
  
The water swirled with dozens (maybe even hundreds) of unseen tentacles. A mound of light, originating from the direction where Her Imperious Condescension swam off, rose from the ground. Fleshy slaps snapped through the darkness. Tentacles gripped the ground and pulled the massive girth that they originated from up and out. More grumbles that kicked up heavy mud, more blasts of water that knocked Mindfang’s heavy upward-bound limbs like they were made of flimsy rags. The Rebreather sputtered and quaked on her face, trying to puff out more frozen blasts of air amongst the turmoil.  
  
It sounded so demonic, the low chirps and throaty grumbles that rushed through the black water.  
  
 _‘Do you see it?’  
_  
Her Imperious Condescension stood in front of Mindfang when the mud settled.  
  
 _Do not look up, you dumb whore_ , Mindfang cursed herself.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension had other plans. She grabbed Mindfang’s chin, like she did the lifetime earlier when she forced the Rebreather on Mindfang’s mouth, and pushed Mindfang’s head up. Mindfang squeezed her eyes shut, not allowing one of her eight irises to catch a glance of the face of a million evils. Her Imperious Condescension rattled Mindfang’s head around, knocking her head against the padded inside of her helmet. Mindfang kept her eyes shut, unable to read any message that was sent.  
  
A combination of Her Imperious Condescension digging her fingers into Mindfang’s shoulders and a horrible, earth shattering wave of noise forced her eyes open. So help her, she looked up at the face. Under the sickly light of hundreds of unseen bioluminescent organisms floating around the face, she saw a prominent beak and a pair of azure eyes, each eye being larger than the jailhouse she barely remembered anymore. Her mind did not break, her body was not ripped apart, but her mind was locked in a stranglehold between run away and hide .  
  
She could nothing but stare, quaking in fear.  
  
 _‘Larger than a city, more magnificent than any living thing on the face of this planet, here she is.’  
_  
Her Imperious Condescension dropped Mindfang’s face and traced something in the muck with her toe. Mindfang’s eyes stayed locked on the leviathan’s face.  
  
 _‘I am docked here until a new heir is to arrive. In the time I wait for the heir to be hatched, and for the power source on my ship to be refueled, she asks me to see a troll other than me. Sometimes, my finger traces a large directory of names, until it stops upon one name, spoken by my subjects on the same breath as folk heroes, who is to come here, half a league under the sea, and see this wondrous face.’  
_  
Her Imperious Condescension swam toward the enormous beak of the deep sea behemoth. The beak opened a small amount before shutting again. She threw herself against the beak, hugging it, rubbing it. The azure eyes remained blank and unchanging, but Mindfang imagined that it was staring at the troll on its face, rather than the one who was cowering in fear. She tasted bile in her mouth as she watched the shape of her empress straddling the mouth of the behemoth. She never felt a wave of confusion as overpowering as the one that passed through her at that moment. Thankfully, the scrolling text on the screen was able to block out the sight.  
  
 _‘It makes Gl’bgolyb happy, so very happy, to show another troll her true face. She is not the abomination of legend that you hear, she is only a tortured mind locked in the undying body of a giant. You have heard legends that she hates everyone but me—this is not true. You see now that she is kind to you, she is making sure she will not harm you. And she is glad that she is doing no harm to you.  
_  
 _‘I took you down here, young marquise, so that you may see, you may watch, you may hear, and you may experience only a fraction of the truth that others have thrown away. Do not worry, for you will live, you are not in trouble for what you have done; when you leave the sea, whisper to others the true face of my lusus, not the other face that has been clouded and propagandized by those who have never seen her.’  
_   
Though Her Imperious Condescension was right, the creature had done Mindfang no direct harm, she was still deathly afraid. She felt trapped, more trapped than the time she spent in prison. The ash-gray bars were replaced with the impenetrable darkness that swallowed her. Her lightweight cuffs turned into a black suit that kept squeezing and constricting every little bit of her body. Instead of the bleary-eyed guards that were quick to bend to her will, she was bombarded with the unrelenting cold water that would not stop crushing her. Prowess or not, she wanted out, and she wanted to be _far_ from the horrible beast that was drilling into her mind, and further away from the tainted medium that it lived in.  
  
 _‘I stay here, instead of clawing through the edges of space, so she remains calm; I feed her the guilty spoils of slain lusii so that she remains alive; and I show an anonymous troll to her so that she may continue living her life the same, knowing that more trolls think less of her as a legendary brute, and more as a suffering soul. I do these chores so that we all live, now all I need you to do is one favor, only a small favor, so that everyone can live.’  
_  
So that was why Her Imperious Condescension was explaining the Rebreather before, both were analogies of helping those who help you first. _And both_ , Mindfang wished she could cry, _involve mutations of nature.  
_  
 _‘Make a minor mention of it in your logs, give a stray whisper to a tramp, deny the lies of false images and rumors. Maybe the words will change the thoughts of the right people, who then will spread the word to others. In an amount time that can only be tolerated and patiently waited out by us near immortals, we will see that a single marquise’s words can do enough. That is all I ask, and that is all that is required.’  
_  
How loyal and how loving, but all for a cause that  Mindfang knew was slandered and opinionated into oblivion. Not a single bigot would be willing to believe only one influential pirate, when their hearts were already hardened in immortalizing the deep sea terror as a personification of evil. Besides, it would be hard to convince anyone if Mindfang did not believe it herself.  
  
After a long moment, Her Imperious Condescension jumped off the bumpy beak and landed in front of Mindfang. Her Imperious Condescension sat, cross-legged, in front of her. The blurred message the empress traced in the mud earlier (she thought it spelled out ‘sorry’) was crushed under her legs.  
  
Sliding the remote into her suit, Her Imperious Condescension straightened her back. One last message flashed across the helmet’s screen as the black box pressed against her skin.  
  
 _‘Do you believe what I say?’  
_  
One long-nailed finger wrote out the words in the muck, barely readable from the poor light,  
  
 _‘Write it here.’  
_  
The - _h_ in ‘here’ was, interestingly enough, written as two curved lines that connected at the center, like the symbol that stretched across her breasts.  
  
Mindfang, with as much strength as she could muster, wrote a shaky word in the frozen mud.  
  
 _‘up’  
_  
The - _u_ looked more like a - _v_ and the curve of the - _p_  trailed into a twisted shape.  
  
‘Do you believe what I have showed you?’  the empress wrote in the muck. Again, each - _h_ looked like two curved lines that joined at the center.  
  
Mindfang took a moment to reflect. She most certainly did not believe everything. But in front of her were the most feared troll (Her Imperious Condescension has admitted, after all, to conquering hundreds of planets and killing literally billions of trolls and lusii), and the most feared creature alive on that side of the galaxy.  
  
 _If_ she said no, _if_ she responded honestly, would the tyrant murder her, then and there? So that she did not do the opposite of her empress’s endeavor, and ruin her lusus’s name even further? Her Imperious Condescension had caused the death of billions, and killing a convicted troll in the environment that the empress excelled in while her victim was helpless in would prove no problem. All that needed to be done was to pull off the Rebreather, or crack the glass, or tear the wetsuit, and a single drop of blood would not need to be cleaned.  
  
But if this were some messed up, double sided question? Would she be rewarded for the telling the truth, to know what she honestly thought of the tentacled being, so Her Imperious Condescension would attempt to disprove Mindfang’s opinions. And only attempt, because Mindfang’s mind was so stoically made up about the hellspawn.  
  
Mindfang decided to lie. With the remnants of strength in her left arm, she wrote  
  
 _‘y’  
_  
Writing a full ‘yes’ would require energy she did not have.  
  
 _‘Is there anything you wish to ask, while we remain down here?’  
_  
Mindfang could only muster to write an - _n_ instead of _hell no, you crazy tyrant._  
  
 _‘Then we shall go.’_  
  
Her Imperious Condescension pulled one clump of lead out of Mindfang’s belt and discarded it on the ground. Mindfang’s body slowly floated back up. Her Imperious Condescension joined Mindfang is rising up, staying slightly behind and out of sight.  
  
The Rebreather started breathing much faster. She had to give the freak of nature credit; it was terrified of the behemoth too.  
  
The wretched, glowing monster watched them as they rose. If it moved when they were freely rising, instead of them being loosely weighed down to the seabed, the water it displaced would knock them around as if they were in a twister. Silent, sinister, and humongous, it stared at them until its light was quickly lost and replaced with the black nothingness.  
  
A journey back up, then eventually spying the stars from underneath the water, then the empress pulling Mindfang back up the granite funnel; then Her Imperious Condescension pulling the Rebreather off Mindfang’s face somehow , then knocking the helmet off of her head, then freeing her hair from the clamped prison, then dragging Mindfang up the ladders, out into the pinkish halls, then leading her past doorways that were silhouetted by faceless trolls, all of them with large fins on either side of their face — Mindfang remembered little of the immediate rise out of the depths and onto the familiar land where she needed no help to breathe.  
  
 _Damned decompression sickness_ , realized Mindfang. Her body was starting to fester from rashes, her limbs felt pained, her head felt woozy, and blackness crawled around the edges of her vision. She shakily hobbled down the stone halls and up the steep staircases, ignoring everyone and determined to find a way out. When she was too weakened and unaccustomed to walking to move on, Her Imperious Condescension carried her, and Mindfang discarded her thoughts of escaping.

  
Up, up, up they went, passing unrecognizable seadwellers in their unimportant cycles of life. The seadwellers scoffed at the weakened and wet marquise, wondering why someone with no business being there was being carried by their empress. As tempted as she was to attempt to rob their will and force their bodies out of their low bows, she concluded that honoring Her Imperious Condescension was humiliating enough.  
  
She was brought to some lavish living quarters with a stunning view of the night sea and the bright lights that hung over a port town. _Highest floor with the best view, how predictable, Empress..._  
  
Eventually Her Imperious Condescension stripped Mindfang out of her clothing and dumped her inside a scalding bath, in a container that was large enough to pass as a shallow pool. Her Imperious Condescension, similarly naked except for her simple crown, sat across from Mindfang, her unkempt hair hanging out of the edge of the water. She waited a long enough time for Mindfang to adjust to the contrasting shock of the heated water before she started speaking.  
  
“I would imagine you are familiar with the dangers of staying underwater that long, or ascending that quickly,” said she. Mindfang had almost forgotten how powerful her voice was.  
  
Mindfang did not respond. She bashfully pulled her knees into her chest and looked away. She sat as far away from Her Imperious Condescension as she could while the empress spoke.  
  
“It is a bad side effect of those who live on the land and venture underwater,” continued Her Imperious Condescension. “Thankfully, you are not suffering from a severe case. You are of higher and nobler blood than most land trolls, and you are very experienced with the water, hmm? A blood level like that does not spare you from the ill effects entirely, but you will live.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension placed her arm on the edge and rested her head on her fist. She stared at the silent marquise with her tyrian tinted eyes; eyes that twinkled from the light of thousands of watched sunsets, and twinkled in the light of millions more sunsets to come. Cerulean may as well be common as dust in a street, and as enduring as meat in front of a pack of starved dogs, when compared to tyrian purple.  
  
“What do you think of Gl’bgolyb, young marquise?” sighed she. “Tell me.”  
  
Mindfang lifted her head from her knees and stared at Her Imperious Condescension with the emptiest gaze she could muster. Whether or not she would be killed, she felt like she had to tell the truth.  
  
She chewed her now colorless lips before selecting her answer. “I think... I think, Your Highness, that what you do is useless.” She paused for a moment to get used to hearing herself talk. It had been a while. “No one will listen to the insane ramblings of a troll, and then claim it to be the unabridged truth.” It had been the first time she had spoken since meeting Her Imperious Condescension, and she hated how weak and powerless her voice sounded in comparison.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension nodded, a look of understanding painted across her face. Mindfang took the nod as encouragement to continue.  
  
“You think, Your Highness, that showing only one troll what sleeps far below this cushioned palace will also swoon this troll to your side, where she could say the opposite, if she wanted.” After a pause, Mindfang added, “Your Highness, will you kill me for telling you the truth?”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension shook her head.  
  
“Will you do anything if I tell the truth?”  
  
Another head shake.  
  
It could have been a simple lie, but Mindfang felt invigorated by the words she wanted to let free. “Then I will speak the truth. Your lusus, that hellspawn that could kill everything, scares me. While you think it is has the most beautiful and unique face, I think it looks like a damned demon. While you kissed and humped that freak of nature, calling it the prettiest creation that you will ever find, all I wanted to do was to find a way to run and kill it.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension looked pained, but she did not lift a finger to stop Mindfang.  
  
“I think that you are a bloodthirsty tyrant,” continued Mindfang, her voice rising in volume and rage, “and every ‘ _Your Highness_ ’ I uttered was out of fear of my life rather than praising yours. You also are a feebleminded bitch, working so hard to make one ugly abomination happy instead of billions of your own kind. When you picked me to dance with your lusus, did you look at the millions of peasants and whores and revolution-hungry proletarians? If you did, you chose to ignore them; if you did not, you chose to stay ignorant and naïve. I give you credit, bitch, someone as old and supposedly as wise as you turns out to be so immature, so desperately trapped in small bubble made out of high-collared fishy elitists and every fucking creature that swims in the water, so oblivious to your own follies. You try to prove yourself to me, to make amends for the bad deeds that you and that detestable monster committed, and you expect me to quickly swap sides because I saw a few barnacles that glow in the dark.  
  
“I hardly care if you strike me down. I am telling the truth not because you deserve to hear it, but because I deserve to say it. I lied to you so boldly down there so that I may live long enough to tell you this, to hope that your dead brain can listen just once: you care not for us, and there is little you can do to convince us — not just me but all of us! — otherwise.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension waited for Mindfang’s seething rage to die down. Her face (Mindfang wished with all her heart that she would see that face crushed and bleeding in her lifetime) was completely unfazed by Mindfang’s tirade, except for the initial look of pain.  
  
She spoke long after silence fell. “Marquise, are you done with your spiel?”  
  
All Mindfang could do was nod.  
  
“Then allow me to speak.”  
  
With water dripping down her grey skin, Her Imperious Condescension rose from the clear water and menacingly moved across the enormous bath as she spoke. Her stream of long black hair traced ripples wherever she stepped.  
  
“You know nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing of the capabilities of my lusus, nothing of her reserved behavior. She could give into her grieving, end this world with a tortured shout if she wanted, but she holds herself back not for her own sake, but for our sake! She could overthrow every city with little trouble; gobble up everything that moves to satisfy her pains. And there is little anyone could do to stop her. But she does not, and she will not.  
  
“I ask little of you! All I ask is for you to attempt to end to those malicious rumors with whispers of an alternative truth. I do not ask for you to become an evangelist of Gl’bgolyb, I only want you and a few others to know the real truth. Not just you , Marquise, have seen her face! If the truth is spread by a few popular pirates and wandering nomads, you will succeed in ways I cannot. Everyone will listen more intently to a face of folk tales than to this face; you have demonstrated that no one likes to listen to me.  
  
“I do this all for her sake, and ultimately for your survival. She is fighting to stay quiet and out of the way, but she is upset from all the insults and infamous titles. She knows very well of her title of ‘carbuncle’, because the horrorterrors antagonize her for it. The more upset she grows, the weaker her hold on her shouts. When she gives it up and releases a shout, a glub, she knows she has brought herself more pain and slanderous titles by those who lived through it. But, if I let her see a single troll, every few sweeps, she grows contempt and joyful that there is a lingering hope of someone seeing her as more than a flesh sore. And this act will keep you alive, not exclusively make a ‘canker’ happy!”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension stood before Mindfang, her face morphed from apathy to malice. Every negative word was spat out like she had just sipped vinegar. Every roll of her - _r_ ’s, every articulated huff of her - _h_ ’s, every emphasized sound that passed through her pointed teeth and mingled with her imposing leer were spoken in a way that was so regal and so demeaning , somehow more demeaning than the tirade she delivered. It made Mindfang, the smooth-tongued devil of the coast, shrink on the outside with fear, but glower on the inside with jealousy and vengeance. The empress did not gain her title for being anything but a condescending assailant.  
  
“I ask you not to praise her, but to know the truth, and help us all live another day. If I release you, I urge you not to parade down the coast and declare that my lusus is a prophet to be worshipped; I ask, instead, that you dismiss rumors that she is a violent monster, and say that she is an out of sight, out of mind problem that should be remembered, but never feared.  
  
“Stand, Marquise,” spat she.  
  
Mindfang stood. Her mind was reeling from her aching headache and Her Imperious Condescension’s booming ‘ _if_ ’.  
  
Excluding her bow curved horns, Her Imperious Condescension was not much taller than Mindfang, but it was enough to make her feel tiny and powerless. Her fists were balled, her brow was scrunched, her chest was pushed forward, her feet splayed as wide as her shoulders. She looked ready to attack. The allusion of a warlord returned to Mindfang’s mind.  
  
“In conclusion, you know nothing to say that I know nothing. I know it all, how my power and my promises weaken as it descends down the blood caste. It is not my fault! not everything is my fault! Blame the sects made by those indigoblooded land trolls, and the seclusion that we face from being a part of an interstellar empire. It is impossible to rule effectively and make everyone happy while keeping every small detail morally correct, but you still blame your empress for every ill that is out of her control.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension pulled her hand back as if to strike Mindfang. Mindfang could have done so much to bring Her Imperious Condescension down at that moment. When she could have punched that seething face, she chose to keep her hands to her sides; though she wanted to see those stupid horns cracked and splintered, she made no move to break them; as much as she wished to see that face twist in sudden pain from _anything_ — jabs to the stomach, a grip around the neck, a kick to the shins, or childishly pulling hair — she instead stood stock-still and thought of comebacks that she never spoke.  
  
Mindfang flinched and prepared herself for the sting. Her Imperious Condescension instead lowered her hand.  
  
The rest of her tirade was lower in volume, but just as strong in demeaning. “Marquise, you never knew me as a young one, before I was deadened by my responsibilities, by my slaughters to keep Gl’bgolyb content, by the deaths of my dozens of friends that were not as lucky as I to be born of higher blood. I wished, and I still wish, that I could fix every little problem under the dual moons, and that I could make you and specifically you happy. But, instead, you blame me for every problem out of my control, and do not give thanks to the pained solutions that I have to make. I know it all too well, and I do not like being reminded of it by some hotheaded troll that has lived only a fraction as long as I, and who declares herself to be the wiser!  
  
“You are so young, barely even past ten sweeps. You are old enough to claim the title of marquise, but young enough to be filled with unguided confidence. You have no right, and no knowledge, to tell me what is right from wrong! I do what I do because I have to, not because I want to.”  
  
 _How arrogant_ , was all Mindfang thought.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension placed her hands on Mindfang’s shoulders and pushed her into the hot water. Mindfang complied without complaint, her knees collapsing from under her; she also did not complain when Her Imperious Condescension sat next to her. Her Imperious Condescension glared forward, her eyes focused on one of the panes of glass, at the black sky and azure sea. The muscles in her back were tight, her crown slid out of place as she scrunched her eyebrows.  
  
Mindfang broke the silence after some time. “Why me? Why did you choose me over the millions of others?”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension’s reply was instantaneous. “You have a way with words and a way among the populace,” said she. “No one would listen to me, or anyone similar to me, without making a big deal of it — which Gl’bgolyb and I do not want — or without disregarding everything that we say.”  
  
Mindfang waited for Her Imperious Condescension to continue. When she did not say any more, Mindfang drove for more answers. “What are the real reasons? I am not special, Empress, you said so yourself, I am only an air-headed pirate to you. So many others have more followers and more popularity than me.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension paused before answering. It was by that pause did Mindfang know that Her Imperious Condescension spoke the truth.  
  
“It is because I knew of you before. No, we have never met before, I would have remembered it. When I said, however many hours ago, that you have ‘ _connections_ ’ , I meant it. You have attracted the attention of certain individuals who live on this floating cage, certain individuals you may have met. When I first heard of a young troll who earned the ears of the high and the low with a foolish wager, of a young troll who was determined to see that her title was claimed and her honor was kept intact, of a young troll who was conveniently imprisoned in this province for not stepping down on the wager... well, it was opportunity that I was quick to indulge on. A signature here, a simple letter there, and I am easily able to get this young troll — this young _marquise_ , by the name Mindfang — out of the land, and under the water.”  
  
 _Then why_ , Mindfang wanted to ask, _did you think I wanted to be on your side?_ But she could not give the question a voice, almost as though that static producing helmet, or the Rebreather, was still involuntarily keeping her mouth shut. Instead, after a pregnant silence, Mindfang said something different entirely. “You looked so happy and overjoyed when you were with your lusus. Were you always like that before?”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension nodded, still staring forward. Mindfang could almost feel the cloud of uncertainty that came with the nod. The empress was either lying or unsure herself of the answer.  
  
“I never had the nicest lusus,” continued Mindfang, “she was a spider that... that mostly fed on trolls.” Mindfang felt regret for starting to tell the story, especially to Her Imperious Condescension. Was she actually trying to reassure her? “I now know that you are why it so easy to find orphaned trolls to feed to her. You would kill everybody’s custodians for your lusus, similar to how I had to kill the defenseless trolls for my own lusus. She was a terror to everyone, including me; but I still loved her, because she was patient enough to raise me. I was always alone because I was known as _that_ troll, the troll who would coax you into being spider food. She made me incapable of having a friend or anything similar until she died.” Mindfang paused, thinking of a quick way to end her story. “I hated her while she lived, but I still cried for her when she died. I know more than any other troll what it is to have a lusus like yours.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension wiggled the crown on her brow, saying nothing. Her face looked emotionless and empty.  
  
“I do not know if I will believe everything you said,” declared Mindfang, “but I do believe what I saw. Take that as you will, Empress.”  
  
Her Imperious Condescension nodded toward the open sea. For the rest of the bath, neither of them said anything.  
  
Mindfang mentally patted herself on the back, thinking it was a pleasantly haunting tone that left Her Imperious Condescension silent.  
  
It occurred to Mindfang how similar Her Imperious Condescension was to her lusus: they were both slandered villains who wanted to be known as anything but. They called themselves a suffering lover, taking the burdens for everyone despite their better wishes; but their actions, their capabilities, and the trusts they betrayed had cut deeper than any act of kindness they were capable of. Her Imperious Condescension was beyond redemption. When she died, she would be sent to the lowest rungs of hell, sipping wine with Death himself, all the while hearing the praises from his vile handmaid of the blood she had spilt and the toes she had trodden on.  
  
At dawn, when the horizon turned magenta and yellow and every color in between, the bath water grew cold. A combination of decompression sickness and hunger left Mindfang exhausted and dazed. When asked if she wanted anything — though she ached for the tingling of tobacco on her lip and the taste of brandy on her tongue — Mindfang denied the request in her own silent defiance. Her Imperious Condescension told Mindfang to sleep until twilight, going as far as giving Mindfang her own recuperacoon to sleep in. Mindfang vowed that she would never allow herself to sleep in a place where there were so many that wanted her throat slit open and her stomach full of poison, but her empress’s offer was more out of trust than comfort, and they both knew that. Mindfang accepted the act of kindness, and she hated herself for it.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension walked toward the large panes of glass and pushed one open, filling the room with the cold ocean breeze and the clear sound of water breaking against the building. She walked on the unguarded balcony outside, her bare back facing Mindfang, her hair plaited into two ridiculously huge braids. Mindfang lifted her head for a moment, groggily staring in confusion.  
  
Her Imperious Condescension turned, shouted to Mindfang over the billowing winds in a cordial voice that failed to erase the wrath it normally spoke in, “sleep well, young marquise!”, and jumped.  
  
When Mindfang clawed her way outside and apprehensively crawled to the spot Her Imperious Condescension last stood, the only evidence she had been there were the champagne-sized bubbles that rose out of the orange-tinted water far below.

**Author's Note:**

> It should be noted that this fic was mostly influenced by my recent rereading of Jules Verne's classic, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (Except that this is far shorter, is nowhere near is as good, and is not full of a bunch of boring sections about marine life.) I also kept thinking of this idea of, 'what if Her Imperious Condescension is actually a good person who has these horrible responsibilities?'. I can only hope that such an assumption as this will be deftly squashed by the canon.
> 
> And yeah, I snuck in a small lesson about how long-lasting public images can be; sue me.


End file.
